The Port Orford Cedar Festival is an increasingly popular event featuring fine art, food, crafts, music, dancing, demonstrations and exhibit honoring the magnificent Port Orford cedar. Memorial Day weekend.

Sat, 9am - 4pm: Wood Art Show at American Legion Hall
Sat, 4 - 6pm: Local Galleries Art Walk
Sat, 7 - 10pm: Dance with the Pistol River Social Club, Community Bldg.

Sun, 9am - 2pm: Wood Art Show at American Legion Hall

The following is from the Friends of Elk River website

Elk River has one of the last large stands of old-growth Port Orford cedar. This unique keystone riparian species is found growing wild only in a limited geographic area of southwest Oregon and northwest California. Prized for its strength, straight grain and decay-resistant wood which doesn’t splinter, it is a favorite wood for arrow shafts and florist boughs.

Sacred tree. Port Orford cedar is precious to both Native Americans and the Japanese. Asians will pay dearly to have a little piece for their home altar, because Port-Orford- Port Orford cedar is similar to their native hinoki cedar. Native Americans consider this magnificent tree a healer:

A Healer: Port Orford cedar: its sacred stature among Tribes and American Indian spiritual practitioners

Port Orford cedar plays a significant role in the cultural, medicinal, and religious life of the many Tribes who inhabit its limited range. Historically, the Tribes lived within the deep canyons of fir and cedar canopy forests that influenced their daily lives. The Port Orford cedar tree held the same significance in the ceremonial life of all the Tribes it touched. Seen as a healer, every part of tree was utilized.

Today only a few Tribes are managing Port Orford cedar, the Hoopa Valley Tribe of Northern California being one. Their Forest Management Plan reflects and emphasizes the cultural and religious values of Port Orford cedar, as well as their concern for the Phytophthora lateralis fungus that is devastating this species.

There is a challenge before our communities to provide for the continued existence of The Healer as an active participant in its traditional ceremonial ways and in its sacred stature in the landscape.

Excerpted from a presentation by Nolan Colegrove,
Hoopa Tribe, and Kathy Heffner McClellan,
Six Rivers National Forest , July 1999.